Hope Church LV Sermons
Prayer is the Work
If you were to come to me and say, "Vance, I want to grow in the area of prayer." Recommend a book, recommend an author that I can read, that I can study to really deepen my understanding of the spiritual discipline of prayer. The author that I would recommend to you is a man by the name of E. M. Bounds. Any of you ever read a book by E. M. Bounds? Some of you have. E. M. Bounds is probably the greatest author, Christian author on the subject of prayer to have ever lived. He has written many books on the subject. And one of E. M. Bounds' books on the subject of prayer, I don't remember which one it was, but he makes this quote, "The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer." What E. M. Bounds is communicating there is the truth that if you find God's activity, if you see God at work somewhere in the world in history or currently, whether it's a revival, a sweeping movement among a people group that had been unreached, a great awakening like we've seen happen in America on a couple of different occasions, anywhere you find one of those great movements of God among people, if you dig deep enough, and if you look hard enough, you will always find that those movements were born in prayer. Our church is very much the story, the history of answered prayer. You've heard me tell the story on numerous occasions about Lady Peralta and how when we first got to Las Vegas to plant the church, I got that phone call from this wonderful godly Filipino lady who told me that for a year and a half she had been praying for our church to begin and as I get the opportunity to travel around the country and train church planners and talk to churches about being involved in church planting, they'll often ask, "Man, what did you guys do out there? Have you seen some of those things happen?" And I have to be totally honest with them. The reality is for nine years we have been riding a wave of the favor of God's activity because one sweet godly lady from the Philippines asked God to do something here. It's really the history of answered prayer. And the more you dig and the more you ask questions, it wasn't just let it be praying. There were people praying on the other side of the world that we didn't even know about it that time asking God to do a work in our city. Our church is really the story of answered prayer and so early in the days of our church we began to kind of come together around what we call the rally cry. The rally cry of our church in the early days was simply, "We don't pray before we work. Prayer is the work. Then God works." I want you to read that off the screen with me this morning. You ready? We don't pray before we work. Prayer is the work. Then God works. You see sometimes we try to get kind of spiritual and we'll plan all our plans and we'll get all our strategies mapped out and then we do the spiritual thing, right? You pray before you work. That's what Christians do, right? Before we start working, let's get together and let's pray over it real quick. Make sure we dotted that eye and crossed that T. But what we really understand about the principle of prayer is prayer is the work. And God works in response to the prayers of his people. Now I don't understand everything theologically about the statement that I just made. I just understand that God and his sovereignty because he has chosen to work through the vehicle of an intimate love relationship works through the prayers of his people. There have been several occasions in the life of our church where we had one of those Red Sea moments. You say, "What do you mean by that?" I mean the children of Israel in the desert. You know, they received a promise from God to flee Egypt that God had a land for them and they took off out of Egypt and they hadn't got very far at all and they got the Red Sea in front of them. They got the Egyptian army behind them and things don't look good, right? But you know what that was? It was an opportunity for God to do something that only he could get the glory for. What that really, that challenge, that difficulty, that obstacle was really an opportunity for God to display his glory and build a testimony to his character among his people. We had one of those moments early on in the life of our church. We've been meeting about a year. If you're new to hope, we're kind of a wandering people. We have a lot of similarities with the children of Israel. We're wandering around the desert together. This is our eighth location in nine years and if you count all the different places we met on this campus, then it adds up to 10 or 12 different locations. You never know where we're going to be at hope. We say come if you can find us, right? We just try to get the word out as best we can. Early on, we'd been meeting for about a year. We had a few hundred people at that point, somewhere between two and three hundred people attending regularly in the life of our church and we were meeting at a carpenter's building down just off of warm springs there at an exchange off of warm springs and Gillespie and it's a nice facility there. We'd been meeting there for a year, had a great relationship with them and we got a telephone call on a Friday morning. I said man, the relationship's been awesome. It was the carpenter's son and they said we love having you guys here, but your church has grown and we've kind of gotten more busy as we've opened our doors and it's just going to not continue to work for us to both coexist here and so we hate to tell you this, especially on such short notice, but this Sunday's going to be your last weekend to meet here. Now that's a Friday morning. We've got several hundred people coming on Sunday and we want to get up on Sunday and say, hey, here's where you're supposed to come next week, right? We were afraid we're going to have to get up and say, hey, come find us. We don't know. So here's what we did. We shot out an email. We had about three hundred people that had committed to pray over this church daily for the first two years. We were beginning back from the east. We had enlisted them. Some of you that are here this morning, they prayed for you by name. Say, hey, you know that. They took the Las Vegas phone book and they just kept praying through the phone book. And if you're in the Las Vegas phone book in 2001, guess what? They prayed for you by name. And we just called, we sent out a word to all those three hundred people and said, man, we need you to be praying. We need you to ask God to show us what's next. We know we're not finished. We're just a year old. We don't know where to go next. And a few of us got in the car and we start driving around. We didn't know what else to do. So we're driving around looking for a place to meet and we pull up at this Boy Scout Center over here on Warm Springs right at the 215. We think, man, this would be ideal. So we go marching into the Boy Scout Center and we walk up to the front desk and we said, hey, we're a church. We'd love to talk with you about coming in and using your facilities. And the lady said, well, you know, we've already had four churches come in. We've already told them no. So we don't make long-term commitments. It'd be wasting your time and our time. So we don't make long-term commitments. So we wouldn't be interested in that. And I said, hey, this is your lucky day. We're not looking for long-term commitment. I said, you give me one week. That's all we need. Give me seven days to find somewhere to go next. And she said, well, nobody's ever asked us that before, but in order to get that approved, we would have to have a meeting with our executive board and our executive board only meets once a month. Let me see when they meet next. They're meeting this afternoon. I said, great. She said, but she'd have to sit down with our executive director and he's using the off at camps. Let me buzz back, see if he's in the office. Buzz back? Guess what? He's in the office. So we go back, sit down with him. We share the story. He takes it to the executive board. They call us a few hours later, say, hey, we won't give you a week. We'll give you a month. We moved in for a month. We met there a year and a half. How many of you came to hope when we were at the Boy Scout Center? So a lot of you here this morning, you came where the Boy Scout Center. That was another step. It was one of those Red Sea moments, obviously not as drastic as the Red Sea in front of you in the Egyptian army behind you. We didn't think we were going to die, but I can promise you from my vantage point, it felt pretty drastic. It was a big deal to us and it was one of those only God could deliver and God did. We're at another one of those points in the life of our church. I sent you, I hope most of you got the email. I sent you a little video. Everybody kept saying to me last night, man, you were really tired looking in that video. I shot that at midnight in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas. So I was tired when I did that. But we stepped out together about a year and a half ago as a church family. We entered into this journey. We called it the big journey where we purchased a piece of land and we're moving towards building a campus, a launching pad for us as a church. For us, it's never been about a building. We always really kind of hoped we'd be able to pull off this thing called church without a real building because we just like being able to give everything away. But the more we got involved in that process, it really became counterproductive. We're winding up spending between four and five hundred thousand dollars a year just trying to rent facilities and equipment and all the things we need. And then we spend 52,000 volunteer hours a year setting up and taking down equipment and 52,000 hours. That's a lot of time. And that's time we're not spending engaging our city and serving in different ministries around town, reaching out to the homeless population, coaching little league, getting involved in PTA. There's only so much time. So we recognize, hey, we need a launching pad, a place that can be a base for us to continue to love our city and love the world and serve the world for the glory of God. So we stepped out in that direction and God's been providing. You've been giving generously. We've already seen a little over two million dollars has come in towards those commitments we made together to build this campus. We've purchased the land and we own the land and God's been good and God's been faithful. But we're at that point now where we've submitted plans. We've got all our civil permits. We're ready to begin to move dirt. Matter of fact, we could start moving dirt any day. We're ready. The challenge is in Nevada, nobody wants to fund hardly anything right now. The market in Nevada and I'm talking, I'm preaching to the choir right now. You know as good as anybody because we all have real estate here. You know what has happened in our economy. Our project is a nine and a half million dollar project. To this point, we've got a few interested in willing to loan us up to seven million dollars, but nobody willing to completely fund the project. So we're at another one of those moments, the Red Sea in front of us, the Egyptian army behind us. It's too big for us. The options are, number one, somebody this morning write a check for two and a half million dollars. You laugh. You know one of the problems we got in the church today, we've forgotten how big God is. I'm serious. We have forgotten how big God is. Listen, the same God that did all the amazing, listen, everything you and I can see in the world, God's spoken to existence out of nothing. Two and a half million dollars. That's not anything to God. My Bible says the earth is the Lord's and all it contains. You know what that means? Right? It all belongs to him. That's a real legitimate option. The problem we have sometimes is our expectations of God are so small. Anybody want to write that check? We'll just celebrate right now. Another option is we find somebody willing to do a secondary lending situation for that additional two and a half million dollars. A third option is God lead us to the right person that will enable us to get the complete funding put together from one source. I guess there's a fourth option, something God wants to do we hadn't thought of yet. Here's what I'm saying to you today. I'd love to be able. God has a way of continuing to draw you to intimacy with you. I'd love to be to stand up here today and say, here's the plan. Let me tell you what I can tell you today. Here's the plan. We need God. And I don't know how he's going to do it. I don't know. Let me tell you what I do know. He's able. And he's faithful. I read a daily devotional. It's called experiencing God day by day. It's written by Henry Blackaby. This morning, this morning's devotion, you open it up. The verse is faithful is he who calls you. And he will also bring it to pass. Listen, God didn't call us to something and then say, hey, you go figure it out. He's already figured it out. Not only that, he's ordered it. He said it in motion. Our responsibility is to seek him. So here's what I'm asking you to do today and we're about to dig into God's Word and look at this. I'm calling you this week to pray. We just spent several weeks in a series called The Real Thing where we've been talking about authentic prayer and authentic fasting. I'm asking you to set aside some time this week. Maybe it's a meal. Maybe it's a day. Maybe it's the week. And you just pray and you fast. And you ask God to lead us, to guide us. You see, I think one of the reasons God allows us these challenges is it brings us back to simple dependence on him. It's easy to get your drawings and your plans and all the people in place and the campaign. And God says, hey, it's what I'm doing. And he just brings us back to himself where we're just like we were when it was 18 adults in a house saying, God, if you don't do this, we don't have another alternative. So with that, I want you to take your Bible, turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2. And I want to give you some parameters this morning as you pray this week. First Timothy chapter 2 beginning in verse 1, this is what it says. First of all, then I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men for kings and all who are in authority so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life and all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable. The sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there's one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all the testimony given at the proper time. For this, I was appointed a preacher and apostle. I'm telling the truth. I'm not lying as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension. There's a whole lot in those eight verses. As a matter of fact, those eight verses are really the cliff notes of the whole Bible. God's whole redemptive plan for the world is found right here in these eight verses. Let me give it to you. First of all, there's God's heart for the nations. You see, verses three and four, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Hey, listen, it is the desire. It doesn't matter where you are, I fall underneath theological spectrum. The word of God says, it is the desire of God for all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires the people in Las Vegas to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires the peoples of America to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires the people of the world to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth this week. Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week, I flew in at noon yesterday. I was speaking at the most unique event I've ever been invited to speak at. I was speaking at what was called a global faith forum in Dallas, Texas. Now, what made it so unique was it was not a Christian event, it was a faith event. So, I was one of about five or six evangelical Christians that were speaking at the event, but then there were a list of other people. If you went on to the website globalfaithforum.com, you could see the list of speakers. There were diplomats from Saudi Arabia and Vietnam and different countries around the world that were leading Islamic thinkers from across our country. And it was an amazing venue to get to speak. And it wasn't, don't misunderstand me, it wasn't an interfaith event. Interfaith is where everybody gets up and says, "Well, really, we all believe the same thing and we all love each other and there's one big God with many ways and we're just going to hold hands and sing kumbaya." That's not what it was. It was a multi-faith event that says this. We recognize their distinct theological differences in what we believe. We recognize that based on what we each believe in our own belief system, many of the people that we're speaking with are not going to heaven. But there are still some common things in society we can come together on. For example, when I take my car to a shop to be fixed, I don't ask if the mechanic is a Christian. I ask if he can fix a car, right? There are things in society where we can work together. And what happens when we work together is it builds bridges of relationships that allow us then to dialogue about faith so that we can share the love of Jesus Christ with people. I was sitting on a panel. There were three evangelical Christians, three people representing Islam, leading Islamic thinkers, and three representing Jewish beliefs, rabbis and moms, different types of people. They come to me and they say, "Vance, if there's one thing that you could say to the other faith groups here today, what would you say?" Here's what I said. I said, "First of all, I want you to know, don't believe," because some of these people from all over the world, I said, "don't believe everything you see on television." Just because some idiot in Florida decides he's going to burn corons representing the evangelical world does not mean that is the heart of evangelical Christianity in America. But I said, "Here's what you need to know." The Bible says, "God loves you, and God loves you so much that he gave his son Jesus Christ to make it possible for you to know him. And if you will receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you can be forgiven of your sin and enjoy a relationship with God." Now, how could I say that with confidence? Let me tell you how I can say that with confidence. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Second thing we see in these verses is God's gift to the nations, verses five and six, for there's one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all the testimony given at the proper time. Here's what that says. Not only does God desire people to be saved to come to know him, but God's made it possible for people to be saved and come to know him. Through the provision of his son, God gave Jesus to mediate, to take the sin that separated us from God on himself, and on the cross, Jesus dealt with our sin. He removed it so that we could enjoy forgiveness and be given by God's grace, a relationship with God. It's not just that God desires all to be saved, but God's given his son so that all can be saved. Then we see in these verses, God's mission to the nations. Look at verse seven. Paul says, this is the reason I was appointed as a preacher and an apostle to the Gentiles in faith and truth. Paul says, "Hey, this is the very, it's because God desires all men to be saved and because God's given his son so that all can be saved." Paul said, that's the very reason I was called and sent out to take the gospel to the peoples of the earth. God's desire for the nations is that they come to know him. God's gift is his son Jesus that they can come to know him and God's mission is for you and how to take this glorious gospel to the ends of the earth, starting right here locally. Now, I know what you're thinking. I thought you said you were going to talk to us about prayer. Everything I've said to you so far is sandwiched in between verse one and verse eighth. You know what verse one and verse eight are two exhortations to pray. You know what that reveals? God's simple process to reach the nations. How does God work in the world? Listen, through the prayers of his people. Let me give you a statement. Look at it on the screen. God's purpose is to bring people into relationship with himself through the provision of his son. But he has chosen to limit his activity to the prayers of his people. Let's explain that. I can't. I don't know. But God in his sovereignty, one man stood on his way out last night that God, because he's brought us into relationship with himself, has chosen to work through the relationship to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. That's pretty good right there. God's chosen in his sovereignty to work through the prayers of his people. So let me ask two big questions and I'm done. Here's the first one. How important is prayer? Well, let's go back to our text here. Paul uses some phrases to emphasize the priority of prayer. Look at verse one. Look at the first phrase of verse one. Paul says, first of all, you could say it this way. Let's get first things first. You could translate it this way. Above everything else we do. That's important to understand what Paul's about to say, right? He's about to say God's desires that the peoples of the earth come to know him. He's about to say God's given his son, Jesus, so that the peoples of the earth may know him. And he's about to say God's given us a mission to take that message to the ends of the earth. But let's get first things first. Let's pray. Then he uses the second phrase. He kind of packs in the first part of verse one. He says, first of all, then I urge. It's interesting because Paul was an apostle. Paul could have showed up anywhere at any time and given a command. He was an apostle. He had apostolic authority. He could walk into the church and give a command. He could have said, listen, let's get first things first. I command you to pray. It's not what he said. Paul uses a word here that describes calling on someone with a sense of passion. It describes urging. You could say he was encouraging. He was exhorting them. He was begging them. It's the phrase that would have been used to describe a general who gathered his troops before going out into battle. And he pulled those troops together and he was exhorting them and encouraging them. Or maybe something we would better familiarize ourselves with is the coach in the locker room who gathers the team and he's giving them that speech right before they hit the field. And he's encouraging and he's exhorting and he's begging them. Paul is approaching us as believers. And he's saying, God, is it work in the world? God desires people to be saved and you're sitting around the world. God's given his son that people can be saved. God's given a submission to take this message to the ends of the earth. And because of that, let's get first things first. I'm begging you. Get on our faces before God. And pray. Then Paul uses a third word. It's in verse 8. It's one of my favorite words in the Bible. It's the word, therefore. You've heard me do it, right? Anytime you see the word, therefore on the Bible, you need to look and see what it's, therefore, right? Because the word, therefore, is an important word. You see, it's a transition word in the Greek language. Here's what it means. Based on what I've just said, now I want to draw a conclusion. What did Paul just said? He just said, God's desires that the peoples of the earth come to know him. He just said, God's given his son Jesus so that the peoples of the earth can come to know him. He just said, we've been called and sent out on a mission to take this message to the ends of the earth. Now I want to draw a conclusion. Paul said, I want you to gather the men in every place and get out a whiteboard and do a strategy session on how to best engage your community with the gospel. Is that what he said? I want you to put together a think tank so that you can come up with all kinds of creative ways to take the gospel both locally and globally. Is that what he said? Said, I want you to take an offering so you can fund missions through organizations around the world. Is that what he said? What did he say? I want people to pray. A.J. Gordon said it this way. Look at this quote on the screen. You can do more than pray after you've prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you've prayed. I like this one by E.M. Bounds. When God's house on earth is a house of prayer then God's house in heaven is busy. You know what I want to see happen this week? I want to see us create busyness in heaven. As we bombard heaven this week as a people, crying out to him for an answer. Let me ask a second question. How should we pray? Paul gives us in verse one four different words to describe prayer. Listen to it. First of all then I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men. Four words in treaties, prayers, petitions, thanksgivings. Now that's not just Paul repeating himself for eloquent sake. Each of those four words describes a different aspect of what our prayer life should be about. I want to give them to you in four statements. Here's the first one. We should pray urgently. He uses the word in treaty. The word in treaty is a Greek word that describes prayer arising from a sense of need, knowing what is lacking we plead with God to supply it. That's an in treaty. It's an urgency. As we think about building a campus that we really believe is a launching pad to touch our city and the nations, we should pray with a sense of urgency. Why? Because we live in a city and a world that is lost. 90% of our city is lost. They don't have a relationship with God. As we think about the western United States, 40% of the unchurched population in America lives in the western United States. America is now the fourth largest lost nation on the planet. Only China, India and Indonesia have more lost people than the United States of America. We don't live in a Christian nation. We live in a lost nation. We live in a nation that is in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is an urgency about the situation. When you take it beyond our borders and begin to look at the world, we live in a world that is lost. Almost one third of the world's population doesn't even have access to the gospel. Much yes have had the opportunity to embrace it. John MacArthur said, "As we look out on the masses of lost humanity, the enormity of the need should drive us to our knees in prayer." Secondly, we should pray desperately. We should pray desperately. It's the word prayer Paul uses. It's the most generic word in all the Bible for this communication with God by crying out to him, describes how desperate we are. We looked at that really. I'm not going to spend much time on it because we looked at it a couple weeks ago and we talked about this attitude of desperation. Remember we said, "When do we pray the most? When we're the most what?" Desperate, right? I mean, let times get desperate. What do we all become? Prayer warriors. Let times be good. We kind of back off. Things get tough. Man, we pray that there's no greater picture of this than in the opening chapters of the book of Acts. Acts chapter 1, I love the chapter. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus takes this band of disciples that have become his followers after three years of earthly ministry. He'd been crucified on a cross. He'd been raised again from the dead. He's meeting with these followers. He gathers them in. He says, "All right, here's the plan. The plan is, I want you to go back to Jerusalem and start this church, this movement. And in their minds, they're thinking, are you kidding me? Of all the places not to go, Jerusalem? I mean, Jerusalem just gave their vote on what they think about our gospel and our church. Jerusalem, 40 days earlier, had lined the streets and screamed about Jesus Christ, crucify Him. Jerusalem had said clearly. Listen, there was no polling data needed to be done. There were no surveys that needed to be taken to understand the demographics of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had said very clearly, "We're not open to your gospel. We're not open to your Jesus. We don't want your movement." And yet Jesus says, "What I want you to do is go to Jerusalem to begin the movement." And then He says, "I'd like you to go from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria." And they're thinking, "Lord, Jerusalem doesn't like us. We don't like the Samaritans. Are you kidding me?" And then He says, "I'd like you to go beyond there to the very ends of the earth." People in places that you don't even know exist yet, and there's no cell phones, there's no internet, there's no cars, there's no airplanes, there's no trains. And if all that's not bad enough, the Bible tells us what Jesus does next is, He floats off. We call it the ascension. Let me tell you what it went. He floated off, and He disappeared through the clouds. You know what they did? Luke, the last verse of the gospel of Luke says, "They returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they gathered in an upper room, and they prayed." And this was no high church praying going on. I mean, it was nobody. God blesseth all the missionaries in the world. No, uh-uh. They were crying out to God. They were desperate. Vance Havener, who I was named after, was a preacher who said, "The tragedy of the hour is that the situation is desperate, but the saints are not." Third aspect, we should pray passionately. It's the word petition. In treaties and prayers, petitions, a petition, the Greek word for petition is a word that describes pleading in the interest of another without holding back because the one praying understands or is involved with to petition. It's our word for intercession, standing in the gap for somebody else. You know one of the biggest problems we've got? We've forgotten what it's like to be lost. Let me show you a verse out of Psalm chapter 9 verse 10. Look at it on the screen. Read it out loud with me. Those who know your name will put their trust in you. Read it again out loud. Those who know your name will put their trust in you. Amen, right? Hey, you ever thought about this? What about those that don't know his name? Hey, listen, Las Vegas is filled with them and they're waking up tomorrow morning with the same problems you've got. Some of them will find out tomorrow they're losing their home. Some of them will find out tomorrow they're losing their job. Some of them will find out tomorrow their health challenges and difficulties in their life they were completely unaware of. Now, those things happen to you and me. Let me tell you what we do. We call our small group, we get on our face and we pray, right? What do they do? Nine out of ten of your neighbors tomorrow morning will wake up with nowhere to turn. We should pray with passion. Fourth, we should pray expectantly. That's the word thanksgivings in treaties and prayers petitions and thanksgiving. Thanking God for what? Two aspects, thanking God for what He's done, gratefulness, but listen, faith, thanking God for what He's going to do. It's an expectancy. When we pray in accord with God's will, we can pray with expectancy. Ten years ago, we were coming out here to plant a church, we put a team together. We were living in Atlanta, Georgia, and we were traveling to some churches so we could learn. Went to a church in Tampa, Florida called the Bell Shoals Baptist Church, large church there in Tampa, great missions church. We visited that church to learn at their missions conference. On the opening night, they had a children's choir come and stand along the front, about 150 kids in the choir. And those boys and girls stood up there with all kinds of passion, singing, "Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me." And I was sitting in their congregation over in this section about over here. This was their church building. I was right over here about three quarters of the way back, right on the aisle. And as those kids were up there singing, I began to weep, sitting in my seat. Tears began to roll down my face because I thought about all the boys and girls in Las Vegas that did not know that Jesus loved them. They didn't know the Bible said that. And sitting there, I began to thank God. I said, "God, I thank you that one day, one day there will be a church called Hope in Las Vegas where boys and girls, we will get the opportunity to raise up another generation of followers of Jesus Christ. Hey, listen to me. This weekend, this weekend, there will be between two and three hundred boys and girls in different parts of this campus learning, "Jesus loves me. This I know we can pray with expectancy." Let me show it to you in the Bible. First John chapter 5 verse 14 with this verse I'm finished. This is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, that's important phrase. Don't miss that. I'm not talking about blank check today. According to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know, we don't hope, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from him. You know what I can't wait? I can't wait to tell you how God does it. Now, it may not look anything like we think it's going to look like, but it'll be better. We don't pray before we work. Prayer is the work. Then, and only then, God works. Let's pray. As you bow with me this morning, in just a moment, I'm going to lead us in a word of prayer, but before I do, I'm going to ask you to do something this morning. If you're here and this is your church home, here's what I'm asking you to do today. I'm asking you this morning to covenant with this church family, that this upcoming week, either a meal or a day or the whole week, you will fast and you will pray over this situation in the life of our church. And if you will say to me this morning, pastor, I will pray. I will join. I will stand with my brothers and sisters in Christ at home, and we will intercede. We'll pray with passion. We'll pray with desperation. We'll pray with a sense of urgency and we'll pray with a sense of expectancy. If you'd say this morning, pastor, for maybe it's a meal, maybe it's a day, maybe it's the whole week, whatever, however God speaks to you, but you will pray this week and fast. I'm asking you to just wear your head bowed. Just raise your hand as a testimony to the Lord. Just raise it all over the building. Just hold it up for a moment. God bless you. You can put them down. Faithful is He who calls you. And He also will bring it to pass. If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus Christ as your person, Lord and Savior, we want you to know Him. We're going to stand and sing a song of worship in just a moment when we stand and sing. We've got some pastors here at the front, some prayer volunteers at the back. If God's spoken to you today and you want to give your life to Jesus, while we're singing, you go to one of these pastors at the front or back or one of these prayer volunteers, and you just say to them, "I need Jesus." And they'll take the Bible and they'll show you how you can be saved. Or maybe you're here today and you need somebody to pray for you today. You just got a burden, a challenge, an obstacle, and you need somebody to just put their arms on you and pray. Listen, while we're standing and singing, you go to any one of these pastors or prayer volunteers like people did last night and just say, "I need you to pray." You don't even have to tell them what it is if you don't want to. They can pray, God knows. You respond. For the rest of us, this is a time to worship, to cry out to God corporately. Lord, speak to us today. Change us. Thank you, God, for what you're going to do. Thank you for praying people. It's in the name of Jesus we pray.